Just Like Starting Over
by Sareki02
Summary: (P/T) Tom and B'Elanna pack. Post Endgame. Rated PG.


Summary: (P/T) Tom and B'Elanna pack. Post Endgame. Rated PG.

Author's Notes: This was written for the wonderful RSB on the eve of her bar exam. While we still don't know the results, she worked so hard and deserves only the best.

Many thanks to Delwin and Photogirl1890 for betaing.

 **Just Like Starting Over**

" _'quong vaj Ocht_ …"

B'Elanna smiled slightly as Tom's soft tenor voice wafted to her ears. Sure, it was slightly off key and the pronunciation was atrocious, but she could not help but stop to watch. Tom was slowly swaying around the room, as though the infant in his arms was his dance partner, softly providing the music for their waltz with his own voice.

She tore herself away from the scene to continue with the task at hand: packing. She felt as though she had been doing this for hours, but little to no progress had been made. It seemed that all she had accomplished was removing everything from where it belonged and placing it on any and every horizontal surface in their small quarters.

The whole process was also being hindered by B'Elanna's complete and utter exhaustion. Miral needed _something_ approximately every two hours and B'Elanna seemed utterly incapable of sleeping in such a fragmented way. She had thought that being Chief Engineer on a ship lost in the Delta Quadrant would have prepared her better for this lack of sleep… but this was the exact opposite of what she was used to. Normally she would work for twenty-four or thirty-six hours straight, then crash for nine, and start the process over again.

But this was not the case now. And her memory was beginning to suffer. It wasn't helping that when packing with a newborn, everything seemed distracting and fragmented.

Tom's voice was decreasing in volume and he was now hovering over the cradle, placing Miral gently down. He slowly backed away, activating the sound barrier around her crib… the only thing that made having only one room for the three of them remotely possible.

She sighed as she turned back to what she had been doing, lamenting that the bed was one of the horizontal surfaces she had covered with their crap. She longed to crawl into it, Tom at her side, and sleep for days. But no, there were boxes to pack and babies to attend to. And she really should get down to Engineering and see how things were going there…

The thoughts were interrupted by Tom's strong arm's encircling her. "Can we go to sleep and never wake up?" he asked, slouching down to wearily rest his chin on her shoulder.

"Only after we finish packing."

Tom sighed, releasing her and slumping down onto the small amount of the bed that was still free. He picked up the nearest object. "When in the hell did we get so much crap? I mean, I showed up to this ship with a small duffle bag. And you had, what, Toby and those bad-ass boots?" He held out the article he had randomly picked up. "Like, what in the world is this?"

B'Elanna snatched the small silver bowl away from him. "I can't believe you don't remember this."

Tom furrowed his eyebrows. "Maybe it's the lack of sleep, but I have no recollection of that."

B'Elanna ran her fingers lightly across the bowl. "It was one of the decorations in my quarters when I first got them."

Tom made a face. "Oh, I recycled all that crap. And then I used the rations to replicate some lamps."

"And your toy cars."

"They're not toys, they're models." B'Elanna rolled her eyes. "But back to the bowl."

B'Elanna leaned against the wall and looked at the bowl in her hands, which had a number of dings in it. "Well, I didn't really care about the crap in my quarters when I got them… other than thinking most of it was ugly. And to be honest, I had never noticed the bowl until one day I hurled it at Chakotay. But after that… I started throwing it whenever I got mad. It helped relieve the tension, it made a nice noise when it hit the wall, but it was too light to really damage anything… except your head."

Tom's eyes suddenly lit up. " _This_ is what you chucked at me when we decided to try 'throwing heavy objects'!"

B'Elanna nodded and smiled. "Yes, the night that we learned that you don't duck quickly enough for me to throw shit at you and how to get a dermal regenerator out of sickbay without the doctor noticing."

"Well, maybe if you actually threw heavy shit and not a fifty gram bowl…"

B'Elanna shot him a disgusted look. "I'm not going to hurl a chair at you."

"I'm just saying I could probably dodge that!"

B'Elanna's sour face suddenly turned to a grin. "I don't know…"

Tom stood, approaching her with a look that B'Elanna knew all too well. "Well, want to find out?"

B'Elanna grabbed her husband's face and kissed him lightly on the mouth. "Tom, I love you, but no. All I want to do is pack enough that the bed is clear so I can sleep." Not to mention that, despite twenty-fourth century medicine, she had expelled a small life form less than a week ago. Things still weren't completely back to normal.

Tom returned her kiss before turning to survey their quarters. "Alright, I'll start with the stuff over by the couch, and you work on the stuff on the bed."

"Okay. And if we don't reminisce about every single thing, this should go faster."

Tom laughed. "Right, no questions. Just put the shit in boxes and we'll sort it out later."

Tom took a box and started haphazardly filling it. Watching him, a wave of panic washed over B'Elanna. Here they were packing, and she wasn't even sure where they would all be going next. Stuffing down the anxiety, she said, "Tom, try to keep Miral's stuff together. Who knows when we will actually be settled and we'll need most of that."

Tom paused. He must have caught the change in her voice. "B'Elanna…. It's going to be fine. I know it might take a while to get everything figured out." He had put down his packing and approached her. Placing his hands on her shoulders, he spoke. "But no matter what, the three of us will be together."

She sighed and leaned against his chest. "I know. It just… it just feels like we are starting over. Again."

"I know. But as long as I'm with you, it doesn't matter if we have to start over a hundred times."

B'Elanna gave him a wry smirk. "Given our track record, that just might be what it takes."

He paused and then kissed her on the forehead. "Then I look forward to each new start with you."

 _Fin_


End file.
